Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 9, 2003

Photo: Kael Alford

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Telecinco cameraman Jose Couso, 37, as he is carried by colleagues from the parking lot of the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad after US troops fired a tank round at the 15th floor of the building where Reuters had its office. Most of the foreign reporters in Baghdad stay in rooms at the Palestine. Couso died in hospital from his injuries to the jaw and leg. He leaves a wife and two children. 8 April 2003
Photo: Kael Alford less

Telecinco cameraman Jose Couso, 37, as he is carried by colleagues from the parking lot of the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad after US troops fired a tank round at the 15th floor of the building where Reuters had ... more

2003-04-09 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- Three journalists were killed and at least half a dozen wounded by American forces in Baghdad in three separate incidents on Tuesday, prompting questions as to whether at least one of the attacks was deliberate.

The victims included a reporter for the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera, who was killed by U.S. fire as he was preparing a live broadcast from the network's office. Two cameramen later died in the Palestine Hotel, the principal headquarters for foreign journalists here, when an American tank fired a round into the building.

The casualties occurred in locations that were well-known to the Pentagon, and a prominent U.S. media watchdog group asked whether -- in at least the case involving the Al-Jazeera reporter, Tariq Ayoub -- the American military might be deliberately targeting journalists.

The assertion was denied by U.S. Central Command, but Nabil Khoury, an Arabic-speaking State Department official who arrived in the region this week to make the U.S. case for the war to Arab audiences, admitted that Ayoub's death would make his job harder.

"The level of mistrust and lack of confidence has been high, and this incident only makes matters worse," he said. "There will be a presumption of guilt."

Al-Jazeera is the Arab world's most widely watched channel, and it uses an aggressive, American-style reporting style to help shape public opinion in a region where stale, government-controlled media predominate.

But its unabashed pro-Arab views and critical coverage of U.S. policy in the Mideast have earned it the reputation among many in the United States as an anti-American propaganda organ.

Al-Jazeera anchors were in tears over Ayoub's death and broadcast a tribute to him over the course of the day that opened with the lines: "The planes that call for democracy and human rights and freedom of the press have killed this man."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a widely respected New York organization, wrote a strongly worded letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying that the three military strikes violated the Geneva Conventions, which bar attacks on the media.

The letter, signed by Joel Simon, the group's acting executive director, pointed out that Al-Jazeera was subjected to a similar U.S. attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, only a year and a half ago.

The letter said: "While sources in Baghdad have expressed deep skepticism about reports that U.S. forces were fired upon from the Palestine Hotel, even if that were the case, the evidence suggests that the response of U.S. forces was disproportionate and therefore violated international humanitarian law."

Tuesday's first attack occurred at 7 a.m., when Ayoub, a Jordanian, was standing on the roof of Al-Jazeera's local offices preparing a live broadcast about an unfolding American offensive in the nearby neighborhood.

The building was hit by two air-to-surface missiles, killing Ayoub and wounding an Iraqi cameraman. Two maintenance employees were trapped in the rubble and believed dead.

The second attack, minutes later, did major damage to the nearby offices of another Arab channel, Abu Dhabi TV. Cameramen were filming U.S. tanks in the area when their cameras were hit by small-arms fire, then the building was hit by at least one tank round. An unknown number of people were injured.

In the third attack, at midday, a U.S. tank round slammed into the 14th and 15th floors of the Palestine Hotel. Killed were Reuters TV cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, and Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman for the TeleCinco television network in Madrid. Three others were injured -- one of them critically.

Officials at Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, admitted that American fire was responsible in all three cases.

Buford Blount, commander of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said the tank had acted in self-defense at the Palestine Hotel, saying it "was receiving small arms fire and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire" from inside.

In the incidents involving Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, officials suggested that American forces did not know that the locations were media outlets.

"This coalition does not target journalists," Gen. Vincent Brooks said in response to a question about the Al-Jazeera attack. "We don't know every place journalists are operating on the battlefield. It's a dangerous place indeed."

However, Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau released to reporters a copy of a letter that the station sent Feb. 24 to Victoria Clarke, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, giving the building's exact coordinates.

"They knew exactly what we were and where we were," said bureau chief Salem Alamir. "They told us that we had nothing to worry about."

The Abu Dhabi TV building was clearly marked with a large white sign on its roof that would have been visible from far away.

Nart Bouran, Abu Dhabi TV's chief news editor, said it would be "very difficult to convince people that this was not a deliberate act."

One U.S. senior official said that ground troops in Baghdad were not briefed as thoroughly as pilots on what targets to avoid or treat with particular caution. "The rules of engagement are different on the ground," he said. "If fired on, soldiers have a right to respond, no matter where the shots are coming from."

Other U.S. officials acknowledged privately that the tank may have fired too hastily at the Palestine, possibly mistaking the more than 50 cameras set up on the hotel's balconies for weapons.

Journalists staying at the hotel widely rejected the initial U.S. explanation for the incident, noting the lack of any indication that weapons were being fired from there.

A Chronicle reporter was walking through the hotel's lobby when the attack occurred, shattering a brief lull in the fierce fighting that had engulfed the district throughout the morning and previous night.

Amid the quiet, everyone's ears were finely attuned to the proximity of weapons fire, and any firing from the hotel would have reverberated loudly and would have been heard by everyone. No such noises were heard.

Nakhoul suffered shrapnel wounds and was in critical condition late Tuesday.

Pasquale underwent surgery for serious leg injuries, according to colleagues.

"Clearly the war, and all its confusion, has come to the heart of Baghdad," Reuters Editor-in-Chief Geert Linnebank said in a statement. "But the incident nonetheless raises questions about the judgment of the advancing U.S. troops who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad."

In recent months, the Bush administration took a decidedly cool attitude toward journalists based in Baghdad. While it allowed hundreds of reporters to become "embedded" with U.S. military units in the field, it urged journalists to leave Baghdad before the war started, saying conditions would be very dangerous.

In early March, Pentagon officials privately told several media organizations, including CNN and the Washington Post, that the Baghdad hotel where most Iraq-based journalists had been staying until then, the Al-Rashid, would be a military target. So journalists vacated the Al-Rashid and moved into the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, two miles away. It is not clear whether any similar warning was given by the Pentagon about those two hotels.

Pentagon spokeswoman Clarke said of Baghdad on Tuesday, "It is not a safe place. You should not be there."